The Sausage, Newly Gracing Summer Grills

By FLORENCE FABRICANT

Published: May 23, 1990

SAUSAGES have always seasoned the American melting pot, and this summer why not try them on the grill for a change?

Fish and vegetables with crosshatched grill marks were last year's fashions. Red meat has a limited following, and grilled chicken has become everyday fare. Bold and brassy sausage can add sizzle to the Memorial Day weekend, the time to bring the grill out of storage so the outdoor entertaining season can begin.

Grilled sausages are not only delicious but in keeping with today's interest in new flavors, ethnic cuisines and humble fare. They are made in more variations than ever, sometimes smoked, and increasingly are lean enough for a dieter.

While a plate of glistening, well-burnished sausages hot off the grill and bursting with flavor can certainly anchor the main course, even a little bit of sausage will add a welcome, savory dimension to a dish or a menu. Chunks of grilled chorizo skewered on toothpicks can make an appetizer, for example, or slices of hot grilled sausage can be tossed into a simple dish of pasta dressed with fresh tomatoes.

Sausages of some sort exist in virtually every cuisine, and have a long history: they were mentioned in Homer's ''Odyssey.'' They have long been considered a food of the poor, a means of transforming humble scraps of meat into something worth eating.

Like ''salad'' and ''sauce,'' the word sausage is derived from ''sal,'' Latin for salt, long used as a preservative. Salt and fat are integral elements of any sausage mixture, but sausage makers today are reducing both, often substituting chicken or turkey for pork in classic Italian sausages and kielbasa.

''We find people are becoming more and more interested in sausages these days, especially if they're lean and made with poultry instead of pork or beef,'' said Joe Cutler, owner of the Corralitos Sausage Company in Watsonville, Calif., a long-established local producer of more than 20 kinds of sausages.

Some manufacturers, in tune with the latest dining trends, are offering novelties like winey duck sausage with green peppercorns, suavely delicate seafood sausage, turkey and chicken sausage spiced with roasted Mexican chilies, and sausages made with venison or wild boar.

Traditional local producers - in Louisiana's bayou country, the Midwest, New England and elsewhere - are finding national markets for their products as the industry enjoys a renaissance. ''You can keep selling sausage by coming up with innovative ideas,'' said Dale Zoll, president of Kessler's, a company in Lemoyne, Pa., near Harrisburg, that began making German-style sausages 75 years ago.

In 1988, he hired Daniel Barbet, a French chef, to develop specialty sausages like lamb with pine nuts and currants, several kinds of seafood sausage and boudin blanc with herbs. ''We're also trying to hold the fat and salt down,'' Mr. Zoll said.

Shari Thomas, owner of the Classic Country Rabbit Company, in Cornelius, Ore., said sales of her company's hot Italian and French-style garlic sausages made with rabbit meat, and of rabbit hotdogs have tripled in the past year. These sausages contain only about 10 percent fat. Traditional pork sausage, depending on the type, can consist of as much as 40 percent fat.

Seven years ago, Bruce Aidells of San Francisco started a sausage company there that carries his name and now sells about 10,000 pounds of sausage a week to restaurants and stores, as well as by mail. Seven of his 17 varieties of sausage are made with chicken, turkey or both, and have a fat content of only 9 to 12 percent. ''People are beginning to realize that quality sausages are becoming widely available and that fresh sausages don't have to be full of fat and chemicals,'' he said.

A sausage is essentially ground meat with pizazz. Whether it's chunky, like a chorizo, or smooth, like bratwurst, a good sausage has a certain firmness, or snap, to the bite, especially when stuffed in a casing. Cleaned links of animal intestines provide convenient casing material. In parts of the world where the supply of meat is limited, oats, rice or other cereal are added as filler.

Although Mr. Aidells uses turkey thigh meat for some of his sausages, less desirable cuts as well as pieces left over from butchering are most often used in sausages.

In the past, sausages were cured by drying or smoking so they could survive long periods in the larder or on a trek across the frontier without refrigeration, and these methods are still in use. Cured sausage, like salami, and many kinds of smoked sausages can be eaten without cooking. Fresh sausages must be cooked thoroughly.

Like pizza and tacos, sausages have become mainstream fare. German-style frankfurters with sauerkraut can be found at any ballpark, and the sputtering, fennel-scented sweet or hot sausage with onions and peppers of Italian street fairs are familiar across the country. In recent years, the popularity of brassy Cajun andouille, garlicky coils of kielbasa and ruddy, peppery Spanish and Mexican chorizo has also spread well beyond their regional and ethnic boundaries.